Emery Roth & Sons, the well-known New York architectural firm,
announced that its chairman, Richard Roth Jr., has retired and that his
partner and cousin Robert Sobel, the firm's president and principal
in charge of design, has succeeded him.

The firm said that Roth, who is moving to the Bahamas, will
continue to serve on its board of advisors and act as its representative
in Florida, the Caribbean, Mexico and Latin America.

"Our family's long-term strategy and the direction of our
business has for some time called for greater activity in the
international arena," said Sobel. "From his new base of
operations, Richard Roth will continue to play an integral role in the
further development of Emery Roth's practice."

Sobel becomes the fourth member of the family to head the prominent
architectural firm since it was founded 95 years ago. He joined the
company in 1976 when he and Richard Roth opened the firm's Houston
branch office together, developing an international practice with major
projects in the Far East. Eight years later, the Houston practice was
moved and Sobel joined the New York office. He was named president of
the firm in 1988.

As president of Emery Roth, Sobel has developed an important body
of work in southeast Asia and China. Among these projects are two in
Singapore that are the largest of their type in the city, Mandarin
Gardens, a single-phase condominium development, and Parkway Parade, a
suburban mixed-use development; Bangkok's Supakarn Tower, the
city's largest retail and luxury condominium complex; the Peremba
Headquarters office building in Kuala Lumpur; and the China World Trade
Center, a 5.7 million square foot project in Beijing that is the largest
commercial development in the country's history.

In New York, he achieved an equally impressive body of work with
office towers at 17 State Street, 7 World Trade Center and 75 Park
Place, and luxury apartment buildings such as The Oxford and St.
James's Tower.

Sobel spent his early design career working with master architects
Jose Luis Sert, Philip Johnson and George Nelson. He left New York for
Houston where in the late 1960's and early 1970's, prior to
founding the Emery Roth office there, he combined a career as a
professor of architecture at Rice University with work as a designer for
some of Houston's leading firms.

Sobel, who has received design awards from the American Institute
of Architects and twice received Architectural Record's Award of
Excellence for Design, is a native New Yorker. He has been widely
published in both the United States and abroad. Sobel received his
undergraduate and graduate architectural degrees from Harvard
University.

Emery Roth & Sons pioneered the development of high-rise
technology following World War II and was responsible for well over 200
corporate towers throughout the United States, including the New York
World Trade Center, Citicorp Center, the Helmsley Palace and the MetLife
(formerly the Pan Am) Building. Today, the firm is known internationally
for the design of the four major building types which form the core of
mixed-use development: office buildings, hotels, retail complexes and
apartment buildings. The firm has extensive experience in integrating
office buildings, hotels, high-density housing and retailing facilities
with associated mass transit, parking, roadway and other urban
infrastructure, including several of the largest multi-use developments
completed in the United States.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Hagedorn Publication
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.